Some of the Best of Tor.com 2021

G. V. Anderson is a speculative fiction author whose short stories have won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, and been nominated for a Nebula Award. Her work can be found in Strange Horizons and Lightspeed, as well as anthologies such as The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. She resides in Dorset, UK, and is currently writing her first novel.

'Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. She is the winner of the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers' Award and a graduate of the Zell MFA program at the University of Michigan. Her work has been published in American Short Fiction, Granta, One Story, Ploughshares, Zoetrope and The Best Short Stories 2022 and 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, edited by Valeria Luiselli (2022) and Lauren Groff (2023), among other publications. Her short-story collection Ghostroots was a finalist for the National Book Award, longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing (for the story 'Breastmilk').

ELIZABETH BEAR was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005, and is the author of The Eternal Sky trilogy, including Range of Ghosts and Shattered Pillars. She has won two Hugo Awards for her short fiction, a Sturgeon Award, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Bear lives in Brookfield, Massachusetts.

Kate Elliott has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for over thirty years with a particular focus in immersive world building and epic stories of adventure & transformative cultural change. She's written fantasy, science fiction, space opera based on the life of Alexander the Great (Unconquerable Sun), young adult fantasy, the seven volume (complete!) Crown of Stars epic fantasy series set in a landscape reminiscent of early medieval Europe, and the Afro-Celtic post-Roman alternate-history fantasy with lawyer dinosaurs, Cold Magic, as well as two novellas set in the Magic: The Gathering multiverse. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Norton, and Locus Awards. Her novel Black Wolves won the RT Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Epic Fantasy 2015. She lives in Hawaii, paddles outrigger canoes, and spoils her schnauzer.

A.T. Greenblatt is a Nebula Award winning writer and mechanical engineer. She lives in Philadelphia where she's known to frequently subject her friends to various cooking and home brewing experiments. Her work has been nominated for a Hugo, Locus, and Sturgeon Award, has been in multiple Year's Best anthologies, and has appeared in Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld, as well as other fine publications.

Glen Hirshberg’s novels include The Snowman’s Children, Infinity Dreams, The Book of Bunk, and the Motherless Children trilogy. He is also the author of five widely praised story collections: The Two Sams, American Morons, The Janus Tree, The Ones Who Are Waving, and Tell Me When I Disappear. Hirshberg is a three-time International Horror Guild Award winner and five-time World Fantasy Award finalist. Hirshberg won the Shirley Jackson Award for the novelette, “The Janus Tree.” His Substack is at glenhirshberg.substack.com. He lives with his family and cats in the Pacific Northwest.

Cheri Kamei is a basement goblin and a floral print disaster. She resides in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Jasmin Kirkbride lives in London and works in publishing. She's a geek with a masters in Ancient History and a soft spot for drawing. Most of the time, she writes fiction, and her short stories have been published in several magazines, including Open Pen and Haverthorn.

Matthew Kressel is a multiple Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated author and coder. His many works of short fiction have appeared in Analog, Asimov's, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Tordotcom/Reactor, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many other publications and anthologies, including multiple year's bests. Alongside Ellen Datlow, he runs the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in Manhattan. And he is the creator of the Moksha submissions system, used by many of the largest fiction publishers today.

Sam J. Miller is the Nebula Award–winning author of The Art of Starving (an NPR best book of the year) and Blackfish City (a Nebula Award finalist and a John W. Campbell Award winner). Sam is a recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and a graduate of the Clarion Workshop. His short stories have been nominated for the World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus Awards, and reprinted in dozens of anthologies. He lives in New York City. 

Annalee Newitz is an American journalist, editor and author of both fiction and non-fiction. They are the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship from MIT, and have written for Popular Science, Wired and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Annalee co-founded the science fiction website io9 and served as editor-in-chief from 2008-2015, and subsequently edited Gizmodo. As of 2016, Annalee is tech culture editor at the technology site Ars Technica.

Noc Gu, Buddhist practitioner, writer, and seeker. Born in 1989 and raised in a suburban town in Shanghai, China, they have been attracted by SF&F novels since a young age and started writing in college.

Peng Shepherd was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, New York, and Mexico City.

She is the nationally bestselling, award-winning author of All This and More, The Cartographers, and The Book of M. Her novels have been acclaimed as a “Best Book of the Year” by the Washington Post, a “Best Book of the Summer” by the Today Show and NPR, and featured in the New York Times, the LA Times, The Atlantic, and on Good Morning America, as well as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Her work also has been translated into more than ten languages, and optioned for TV and film.

Cooper Shrivastava is a writer based in New York City. She holds an undergraduate degree in math and philosophy, and is always excited when she can bring these elements into her fiction. When not reading and writing, she can often be found indulging in her other strange hobby: recreating recipes from historical sources. Cooper was a member of the 2019 Clarion Writers Workshop and has been published in Clarkesworld, and Heavy Feather Review.

Carrie Vaughn survived her air force brat childhood and managed to put down roots in Colorado. Her first book, Kitty and the Midnight Hour, launched a popular series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk-radio advice show. She is also the author of Voices of Dragons, her debut novel for teen readers. Ms. Vaughn lives in Colorado.

E. Lily Yu is the Washington State Book Award and Artist Trust LaSalle Storyteller Award-winning author of On Fragile Waves, Jewel Box: Stories, and Break, Blow, Burn & Make. A recipient of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, she was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, the World Fantasy Award, and the Washington State Book Award. Her stories have appeared in venues from McSweeney's to Tor.com, as well as thirteen best-of-the-year anthologies, and have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. She lives in the Pacific Northwest and can be found online at elilyyu.com.